View From the Cat Perch

Though I can see in hindsight how cruel it is, I never intended to torture my cats when I set up a quadruple bird feeding station just beyond their cat post. I can't tell if they appreciate the view, or if it is slowly driving them mad, as I believe that a cat's natural state tips towards the unsteady. Even my daughter, who today insisted on going by the name of Mr. Scrooge (I blame NPR and Jonathan Winters), has begun to spend a significant amount of time sitting in the cat perch-- and so quietly that I have revised my "Sitting in the cat perch gets you a time-out" rule down to "Sitting in the cat perch gets you a time-out-- unless you are watching the birds."

I have worked steadily from the time I was 16. CVS in High School, 20 hours a week at Dunkin' Donuts my freshman year of college, 30 hours a week in Day and Afterschool Care centers the following 3 years, straight into a 3 year stint as an inner city school teacher that was followed up by 6 years in a private school and 2 hellish months in a suburban public school. When I threw in the towel after those final two months and decided to stay home with my then 1 1/2 year old and "reevaluate" my options I was petrified by the seemingly endless stretches of unstructured, unproductive time ahead of me. Take breakfast. For me, breakfast is easy. 3 mugs of coffee. Piece of bread. Jar of peanut butter. Combine in logical amounts. Done. Mr Scrooge, however, was just discovering the joys of using a spoon. A spoon for her yogurt. A spoon for her Cheerios. A spoon dipped in yogurt and then covered with Cheerios. A spoon dipped in yogurt and Cheerios wiped in her hair. Pincer grip to get the Cheerios out of her hair. Spoon dipped in yogurt and smeared on her sippi cup. Cheerios fed to the cat. Cat dipped in yogurt streaking across the dining room floor. This generally took at least an hour during which I sat helplessly beside her, gripping mug #3 and cringing because I hate yogurt.

This is how I discovered birds. Unacknowledged by me, my partner had long been quietly tending a single feeder which dangled, in the colder months, just beyond our patio door. As I sat at the table one morning, picking Cheerios from the cat's fur, I noticed that one of the little brown birds hopping around under the feeder looked different from the others. Wait... are there different kinds, I wondered? Leaving Mr. Scrooge in the loving care of her 3 feline companions I drifted towards my computer and began trying to identify the two species on the patio. I narrowed it down to about 5 nearly identical species, printed out identification lists for the suspects and returned to the table, pleased to find that someone had eaten the rest of the Mr. Scrooge's yogurt.

From here my indifference to the feeder grew into an interest and then into a hobby. One feeder became 2, then 3, then eventually 6 with a smattering of things tossed by the handful out the sliding glass door and into the grass for specific visitors (peanuts for the blue jays, seeds for the juncos, corn for Squirrely McFatFat). I've been known to squeal and dive for my camera when someone new appears at my feeder and, when a Northern Flicker woodpecker arrived for the first time today I gambled being a few minutes late picking up my daughter in exchange for an awesome photo. On cold snowy mornings they generally get fed before I do and Mr. Scrooge has no doubt that I'm serious when I threaten to give her uneaten breakfast food to the birdies. They have developed one hell of an appetite for Cheerios.

Pictured above: Female Downy Woodpecker, House Sparrow, Male Downy Woodpecker, Northern flicker, Junco, Carolina Wren and, in the center, Squirrely McFatFat